A falling blade from a wind turbine near Wyanet in Bureau County last week has resulted in some fears, but one area school says there is no need to worry. The blade was 140 feet long and weighed 6 tons. Fortunately, it landed in a corn field and there were no injuries or damage to property. The Sherrard School District has just erected a wind turbine at its junior high and high school campus in lower Rock Island County, but there is no connection to the one that broke in Wyanet last Wednesday.

When it came time to start repairing a wind turbine at the ethanol plant on Oct. 15, the project had to be put on hold. ..."The blade has been cracked all summer. It's been frustrating," says Dan Moore, director of project development for Renewable Energy Solutions. When the broken blade was discovered, the turbine furthest from the ethanol plant had to be shut down. All three blades needed to be replaced, says Moore, because we couldn't find one to match the other two.

When we reported on the videotaped Vestas turbine explosion, the wind energy watchdog group Industrial Wind Action Group had a list of 36 turbine failures in the U.S. Today that list has grown to 51 recorded turbine failures. Across the pond, the British group Caithness Wind Farms, which tracks such global turbine accidents, says the number has jumped to 65 so far this year, up from 11 in 2001.

Lisa Linowes, executive director of the group, said the failure in Wyanet is evidence that wind energy isn't as safe as its proponents claim. "This whole thing about safety worries us a lot," she said. "In the last year, there have been at least 15 cases, and those are just cases that have been reported."

There are 11 wind turbines at Green Mountain Power's Searsburg wind facility but recently one of them suffered a setback when its nacelle (or wind turbine gearbox) collapsed in high wind conditions. ...On Monday, September 15, a blade on turbine number 10 came in contact with the tower. The chain reaction caused it to buckle and it crashed to the ground, scattering debris several hundred feet from the structure. No individuals were hurt when the nacelle collapsed. However the nacelle leaked 40 gallons of hydraulic oil on the site.

A wind turbine blade came crashing to the ground Wednesday, halting energy production at a small-scale wind farm southwest of Wyanet because of what may be a defective design. In all, four turbines on Richard Shertz's property - all part of the AgriWind facility in central Bureau County - have stopped turning after a blade on top of one of the towers broke off about 9:30 a.m. "It was the loudest noise I've ever heard," he said. "I thought it was thunder."

Shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, a rotating blade on a wind turbine at Schertz's farm broke off, plunging to the earth in a cornfield about 150 feet west of the turbine. ...The spokesperson said the investigation into this turbine had just started, but the company was in the middle of a blade retrofit program across the United States to correct an "unfortunate" design issue in the first generation of this blade.

A proposed wind turbine at the Cuyahoga County Fairgrounds faces one more hurdle before it can be approved by the city. After being approved unanimously by both the Board of Zoning Appeals and Planning Commission, the turbine is now before City Council.

It turns out that recent shipments of king-size wind turbine blades that cut through the heart of downtown Buffalo were not off course after all. Mary Joyce Permits of Randolph, which plotted the delivery trucks' course and arranged escort vehicles, purposely steered the bulky loads from the Peace Bridge, down Niagara Street to Niagara Square and up Delaware Avenue. ..."It's not ideal, but we've got the required city permits, and we'll continue to bring them through downtown until the construction situation changes," she said.

A blade on one of the Searsburg wind power turbines flew off during a recent windstorm, hitting the tower the turbine sits on and destroying it. It is unclear when, or even if, the nonfunctioning turbine will be back to full capacity. It was one of 11 that make up the Searsburg project owned by Green Mountain Power. "We had some really strong winds coming through," said GMP spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure. "A blade failed and struck the tower."

Rumours that giant wind turbines at Camber are sinking into the marsh have been scotched. Neale East, of the Wind Farm Liaison Group, said: "No they are not sinking. There is no truth in this whatsoever. "All 26 turbines are now up and the next construction work to take place will be putting up three metereological masts.

The oil cleanup at Dawson Point near Marysville was finished Friday afternoon, but residents in the area are still not allowed to drink from their wells. ...About 396 gallons of diesel fuel was spilled Wednesday morning during fueling of the Sea Hound, a tugboat operated by Nadro Marine Services Ltd., a contractor based in Port Drove, Ontario. ...The tugboats are used to push barges loaded with supplies and parts from Ogdensburg for Canadian Hydro Developers Inc.'s 86-turbine Wolfe Island Wind Project. So far, 28 wind turbines have arrived.

According to Canadian Renewable Energy Corp., three to four barrels of diesel fuel were spilled around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday. The fuel was being transferred between tanks on Sea Hound, a vessel operated by Nadro Marine Services Ltd., a contractor based in Port Drove, Ontario. Nadro Marine has been transporting wind turbines from Ogdensburg for the 86-turbine Wolfe Island Wind Project. ...Mark O. Mattson, president of the Lake Ontario Waterkeeper, an environmental advocacy group based in Toronto, finds the incident ironic. "It's a bit of a shock. The whole purpose of the wind power project was to help the environment," he said.

About 10 households on an island near Kingston, Ont., have been told to drink only bottled water after a tugboat spilled about 1,500 litres of fuel near shore. The diesel fuel spilled into Lake Ontario near Wolfe Island around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday from a boat carrying equipment for a controversial wind turbine project. Some residents have fought hard against the project, saying they are concerned about the environmental effects of installing 86 turbines on such a small island.

Southeastern Idaho farmers fear damage to a U.S. Interstate 86 exit near American Falls could impact the fall sugar beet harvest by forcing beet-laden trucks to take an inconvenient detour. On Sept. 25, a truck carrying the base for a large wind turbine failed to exit the freeway, damaging the Exit 40 overchange bridge.

Shocking footage of a malfunction that destroyed a Danish wind turbine has been passed to the News Telegraph - by a district councillor concerned over the future of Ashbourne's first wind farm. District and county councillor Andrew Lewer says he sees the decision to allow an appeal and grant permission for four turbines near to Carsington Water as a "nail in the coffin for local democracy".

James Fisher and Sons, which owns liquefied gas tankers and nuclear waste vessels, is a member of the prestigious UK Chamber of Shipping. The Chamber has slammed the government's decision to give the go ahead for the 139 turbine West of Duddon Sands windfarm to be built eight miles off Walney. A spokesman for the Chamber said: "We are extremely disappointed that the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) has given consent to the development of the West of Duddon Sands Windfarm site in Morecambe Bay without properly taking into account either the safety of seafarers and passengers, or the environmental costs of forcing ships to detour around the site.

A broadside accident occurred Wednesday in St. Cloud between an oversized-load truck carrying wind turbine parts and a minivan, resulting in one death. Millard and Shirlee Nelson of South Haven were heading north at the intersection of Highway 15 and Second Street about to turn left. ...The number-one thing MnDOT can do in wind turbine transportation is ensure the public's safety on the roads, Coulianos said. Coulianos also said for the three and a half years he's worked for MnDOT, this is the first fatality he's known involving transportation of wind turbines. "This is what we plan not to happen," Coulianos said. "This is very serious to us."

A zero-carbon development near Wigan has been put on hold over concerns that a proposed wind turbine will interfere with air traffic. English Partnerships (EP) has suspended the bidding process after receiving an objection from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) about the 150m-high turbine. The CAA is concerned the 2MW turbine, which would have powered the 650 homes planned on the Bickershaw site, will interfere with light aircraft based at Liverpool and Manchester airports.

The industry of building and operating wind turbines is "going big guns." That's Rocky Waller's perception as his agency and others create programs to keep workers in this emerging industry safe. ..."There are people going into this industry that have never worked around a wind farm construction site or within the turbines themselves," Waller said. "We are talking shoe salesmen, burger flippers and police officers. "They don't realize the dangers."